These predictions provide a strategic context that will enable CIOs to lead their organizations through a period of multiplied innovation and disruption over the next 5 years. They also lay out IDC’s vision for the 10 most important shifts that will happen in IT organizations over the next 60 months and will help senior IT executives in the formation of their strategic IT plans.

Digital transformation (DX) continues to drive the creation of value, growth, and competitive advantage through new product/service offerings, innovative business models, and deeper business relationships. A major threat to successful transformation for most businesses remains the failure of their IT organizations to convert from being the back-office enabler of internal business processes to playing a leading role as the engine powering digital business flows between people, things, and data. Datacenters and edge facilities such as server rooms and closets, whether owned by the business or by colocation/cloud service providers, are where this transformation is occurring. Between now and 2023, CIOs and their teams will need to address the following datacenter developments:

Prediction 1: By 2020, the need to secure growing volumes of dispersed data generated at edge locations will have driven 40% of enterprises to set up and operate data vaults in multiple colocation facilities.

Prediction 2: In 2019, 80% of enterprises’ new digital services will be composite workloads that need secure, reliable interconnection with third-party data/analytic resources in cloud or colocation facilities.

Prediction 3: Over the next three years, 70% of enterprises will adopt dynamic software-defined branch and network solutions that deliver security and flexibility across cloud, datacenter, and edge interactions.

Prediction 4: By 2021, 60% of enterprises will require access to power/cooling infrastructure operating at three times today’s standard to manage power-hungry accelerated compute systems’ fluctuations and demands.

Prediction 5: By 2022, 50% of IT assets in enterprise datacenters will have the ability to run autonomously using embedded AI functionality that leverages smart IT and facilities systems.

Prediction 6: By 2022, 40% of enterprises will have doubled their IT asset spending in edge locations and nearby colocation facilities versus core datacenters to deliver digital services to local users and things.

Prediction 7: By 2023, 60% of enterprises will use flexible, lower-cost IT consumption models that leverage centralized IT asset depots jointly run by hardware suppliers and colocation providers.

Prediction 8: In 2019, 25% of enterprises will shift away from large datacenter consolidation to modernizing optimally located smaller datacenters to support new compute and data-intensive applications.

Prediction 9: After 2020, most enterprises will shift internal investments to deploy dedicated cloud platforms from which to launch innovative services rather than investing in modernizing existing datacenters.

Prediction 10: By 2022, 40% of enterprises’ spending with colocation providers will be on advanced asset management and optimization services rather than on basic connectivity and facility services.

In a digital economy where owning the customer experience is the goal, a premium must be placed guaranteeing response time and rapid but secure data movement. Greater use of data vaults, increasing service interconnect of composite workloads, and the creation of a service delivery edge will dominate datacenter decisions.